Green computing seems to be catching on in many forms--especially in
telecommuting and recycling.

Telework advocates have long predicted that the computer will replace the car,
and recently you could see some solid evidence of that. Commuters who once
had to drive for hours to corporate centers in Los Angeles and San Diego now
have an alternative that's closer to home. The Riverside Telecommuting
Center, about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles in the town of Riverside, is a
pioneering effort at creating a satellite corporate computing center. Several
companies, including Pacific Bell, Edison, Xerox, IBM, and Disney, are leasing
or plan to lease office space in the center for white-collar employees who
live in the Riverside area to let them avoid the three-hour commute into the
city.

CD-ROMs have finally arrived, along with the Multimedia PC. Because many
CD-ROMs contain time-dependent information, the discs become useless as soon
as the information on them is outdated. And unlike floppy disks, useless
CD-ROMs can't be reused, so most people just toss them. A CD manufacturer
called Digital Audio Disc, a Sony subsidiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, melts
down discs that don't pass quality control and uses them to make CD packaging,
but as yet there's no company that recycles used CD-ROMs and audio CDs from
consumers. Likewise, it's possible to recycle the jewel box and plastic tray
that CD-ROMs and audio CDs are packaged in, but so far only the world's
largest jewel box and tray manufacturer, Atlanta Precision Molding, has the
facilities to do it, and the company recycles only its own scrap. There's a
niche for an enterprising plastics entrepreneur who wants to get into compact
disc recycling.

In another development, some CD-ROM distributors are turning away from plastic
CD packaging altogether. Apple Computer, which sends out thousands of CD-ROMs
to Apple developers every month, now protects its discs with a cardboard
sleeve instead of a jewel box, as does Educorp, the biggest distributor of
commercial Macintosh CD-ROMs. By the way, if you have lots of floppy disks
you want to recycle, a company called Covenant Recycling Services
(201-838-1336) will recondition them and sell them through a middleman to
schools and other outlets.

In a previous column I mentioned a Mac program called DynoPage that makes it
easy to print documents on both sides of the paper. Robert G. Chaplick of
Wheaton, Maryland, notes that there are two much less expensive PC utilities
for double-sided printing. One is a shareware program called Microtxt, which
can be found in shareware catalogs and on several online services; the other
is PRNCOL (available for $15 from Steve Fox, 11515 113th Place NE, Kirkland,
Washington 98033). Chaplick uses PRNCOL for all his printing and recommends it
highly. If you want recycled paper to print on, there are several mail-order
sources, including Earth Care Paper (4601 Hammersley Road, Madison, Wisconsin
53711; 608-277-2900) and Inmac (1111 West North Carrier Parkway; Suite 200,
Grand Prairie, Texas 75050; 800-547-5444). Inmac even offers hard-to-find
recycled fanfold paper.

More and more people are saving money by recycling their laser toner
cartridges and reinking their printer ribbons. Be sure, by the way, to use the
newer soy-based ribbon inks rather than petroleum-based inks and to keep
ribbons well inked to lubricate the printer head. Did you know that you can
refill the ink cartridge in your Hewlett-Packard DeskJet or DeskWriter printer
by yourself? Bruce Marchesani of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, sent in this tip.
Simply use a hypodermic syringe to inject the empty cartridge with a new
supply from a bottle of standard Shaeffer ink, which can be purchased in any
stationery store, or use a soy-based ink of similar viscosity. (Syringes are
available from your local surgical supply house.) There's a little pinhole in
the top of the ink cartridge that allows you to do this.